Delivered: 1 May, 1920
First Published: Pravda No. 94, May 4, 1920; Published according to the newspaper text
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 31, page 126
Translated: Julius Katzer
Transcription\HTML Markup:
David Walters &
R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
(Comrade Lenin mounts the platform to unanimous applause from the audience.) Comrades, this was once the site of the monument to a tsar. Today we are laying the foundation stone of a monument to the glory of liberated labour. The capitalists used to speak of the freedom of labour, while the workers and the peasants were obliged to sell them their labour and, in consequence, were free to die of starvation. We call that kind of labour wage slavery. We know that it is no easy matter to organise free labour in the proper way and to work in the conditions of the difficult times we are living through. Today's subbotnik is the first step along that road, but if we carry on in the same way we shall create a kind of labour that is genuinely free. (Prolonged and unanimous applause.)